It seems that `git annex status` is much slower than `git status`, at least in direct mode. The man page does not give any hint about why it should be slower. Does `git annex status` do something that `git status` does not? Here is an example in a repo with 8000+ files in direct mode and with no modified files: $ time git -c core.bare=false status --porcelain > /dev/null real 0m0.096s user 0m0.042s sys 0m0.071s $ time git annex status real 0m17.144s user 0m10.555s sys 0m1.934s It is strange to see that `git annex status` is ~200 times slower than the bare `git status`.